The Roe Valley Newsbrowser on-line since 1997

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February 2014

Limavady's skyline The editor of this publication feels strongly that the above mentioned feature should be preserved for all to enjoy. Whilst freely admitting that the firm planning to build twenty-one 125 meter high wind turbines up there deserve first prize for the most outrageous planning permission application ever, he feels strongly that the granting of this should be prevented. People of a similar opinion may find the link at the bottom of this article useful. It leads to a page with many relevant links and a copy of the letter the editor has written to the planners objecting to this application. Readers may feel free to make use of some or all of this, if they want to do a similar good deed. A letter to the planners

Winter has come Considering the miserable time other parts of the country have had with the weather, the Roe Valley hasn't done too badly. We have even had some brilliantly sunny days and hardly an ounce of snow to be seen anywhere. All this changed on the 11th of this month when it finally started to snow. Mind you, nothing very dramatic in lower lying areas but - as our picture shows - up on Benevenagh one could find some very wintry scenes.

Hail, Snow, Rain and High Winds 15th February 2014 The above headline more or less sums up the weather of the last few days. Our photograph shows Myroe with the mouth of the river Roe on the right and Lough Foyle in the background. The place is starting to look like a lake, what with all that downpour and the melting snow. Elsewhere conditions aren't much better and apparently there is more to come.

The Earth is slowing down Now how is that for a headline? As regular readers will know, we try to bring you the news that other media outlets don't. We know that some readers are keen to know that the National Physical Laboratory has found it necessary to add yet another  tenth of a second to UTC (GMT) which is the time measured by atomic clocks and which governs modern life. Because the revolution of the earth is slowing down, corrections have to be made to GMT at unpredictable intervals. For quite a few months this correction was -100mS. It is now -200mS which means our clocks are two tenths of a second faster than astronomical time. The relevant bits are bordered in red on our illustration, which shows the output of the NPL atomic clock in Anthorn. As soon as the  correction factor reaches a full second, a leap second will have to be added to GMT. The last time this happened was on the 30th of June 2012. You can watch this historical event by following this link.

 

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